How to Boost Sales of Your Niche Product or Service

October 6, 2009

When somebody visits the sales page of your niche website, they are looking for a solution to one of their problems, they have an itch and they’re looking for a way to scratch it. They are not there to buy your product… That is the last thing on their mind. Your website has got their interest and they’re checking it out, no more, no less.

Now it could be that they are in a bad mood and on that particular day they don’t like your writing style, or they might be late for another appointment and don’t have the time to fully read your sales page, what ever the reason they won’t be buying your product today… and then they’re gone. In fact most sales pages are lucky to convert 4 out of 100 website visitors into customers. That means 24 out of 25 visitors will leave your sales page without buying.

You’ve no doubt heard many times that the way to get around this problem is to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list so you can pitch them over and over again with your sales message. This is quite true, it’s the way to go, but just how do you get your website visitors to join your opt-in list?

It’s not that difficult, there are many ways to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list, and here are a few examples you can implement on your website today:

1) Place an opt-in form on your sales page. You need to place your opt-in form a few times on your sales page, you also need to make sure readers understand that you are providing some free information related to your niche product and they only way they can get it is by subscribing to your list, and the reasons people will opt-in can include:

i) Those visitors who are in a hurry and don’t have time to read your entire sales page will be inclined to join your opt-in list as a reminder to themselves to carry on checking out what you have to offer.

ii) Those people who can’t afford your product will sign up for more information from your free information series.

iii) Those people can’t decide on any course of action will sign up hoping you will help them make up their mind.

In all cases, if you had not provided an opt-in form on your webpage they would have left without subscribing, and you already know how difficult it is to get visitors to your website in the first place.

2) Place your opt-in form on a popup which displays either as soon as the webpage opens, or when it closes. Popups might be the cause of much controversy, but no matter what people think, they are effective. The new generation of popups and popunders are not easily blocked and in some cases cannot be blocked at all if the person is using Internet Explorer.

Fortunately the majority of internet users still use Internet Explorer, so these unblockable popups are the way to go. Just don’t make your popups a nuisance… Use them with cookie controls so they are only activated once per day or once per hour, and don’t use them on every page of your website. Some of the newer popups will only activate if the website visitor exits the sales page by closing the browser window or clicking the back button. If they go through to the sales process and purchase your product, they will never see the popup.

3) One of the most effective ways of getting people to subscribe to your opt-in list is to send them to a special opt-in form first. In other words nobody gets to your sales page unless they have subscribed to your list. These special opt-in pages are known, amongst other things, as “squeeze pages” or “name squeeze pages”.

These pages are the most effective at converting website visitors to subscribers and they don’t seem to affect a sales page’s conversion rate at all. If a sales page was converting 1 in 25 visitors to a customer, the introduction of a name squeeze page doesn’t seem to change that… For every 25 visitors to the name squeeze page 1 still becomes a customer. The difference is the number of people who subscribe is substantially higher than for any other opt-in method.

The point to bear in mind is that many of the subscribers to your list will buy your niche product from links in the autoresponder emails sent to them. If you had not been using an opt-in form you would never have had the opportunity to make these extra sales.